Is Facebook Places not sufficiently immersing you in the mundanity of your friends' lives? Try Nearby Friends, an app that plots their check-ins—past and present—on Google Maps. Just don't let any of them catch you using it.

Will most people ever really aspire to be mayor? The buzz surrounding location services is massively disproportionate to their actual use, says the NY Times—only 1% of Americans use them weekly. But will it remain a yuppie novelty?

Apple's sweeping "Device to Device Location Awareness" patent covers a lot of ground, not the least of which are a hint at iPhone video conferencing and the ability to locate whoever's on the receiving end of your call.

Google's location-aware features can feel creepy at times, but in the case of mobile searches they can make life a heck of a lot easier. Queries made from most mobile devices can now include suggestions optimized for your current location.

Google's vision for the future of Android evidently includes a system by which your phone adapts to whatever it thinks you're doing based on accelerometer data. Like a newer, more advanced Clippy, in your pocket.

We already know how great Microsoft's Windows Mobile Live Search was, but combining with Sprint and adding location-aware searches? That's fantastic. The GPS location-aware that's going to automatically figure out what city you mean when you're searching for "Sushi Restaurants" isn't actual GPS—it's cellphone…